I am going to start this thread in the hopes that it will help someone some day. Believe me when I say this is a very painful(expensive) story for me to tell and it is far from over.
It starts a month ago when we PAP tested our bulls for the local all breeds bull sale. I have a real nice purebred red Gelbvieh bull that looked a little off and appeared to have a mild case of footrot starting. After doing the PAP test which involves running a probe into their heart to check the pressure in the pulmonary artery we treated him with LA 300 and some sulfa boluses, maybe a little overkill but we had one of the top vets in the country on hand and he agreed that we needed to knock this out before the sale which was 2 weeks away.
He seemed to be pretty OK afterwards except that he was extending his neck some and kinda choke'y, but he had , had 5 sulfa boluses shot down his throat so we didn't think much of it. After we tested the bulls(29 of them), we hauled them back to the pasture and turned them out and fed them. He appeared to be normal at that time(2pm on Monday) As luck would have it Tuesday is my busiest day and I never go look at the bulls on Tuesday so I rely on the folks I run my cows with to do that. Well that Tuesday turned out to be brutal for them with close to 20 calves being born and some sick ones to doctor and they did not get up to feed the bulls till almost 7pm. When they got there my friend calls me and says we have a dire emergency with your 11 bull I can hear him breathing from 30 yards away.
Of course I drove out there asap. He was in severe distress and had foam coming out of his mouth. When I arrived she was on the phone with the vet who had done the testing and his thought was either a reaction to the sulfa or possibly he had ched up and swallowed a rattlesnake and it had somehow scratched his gullet on the way down. He looked terrible and his neck starting behind the jaw was swollen so bad that we could not find the jugular vein to administer the Banamine IV as the Vet had suggested. We treated him that night with Pennicillan, Dex and Banamine.
Well things are going downhill again. He appeared to improve for a couple of days and then went downhill again. At that point we hauled him to the corral and gave him Draxin, Dex and more Banamine. That seemed to bring him around pretty good and on the advice of the vet I put him on a diet of soaked beet pulp, sweet mix and hay pellets. Soaked into almost a soup to not irritate his esophagus any worse. After 10 days of this I did a BSE on him (because I had him sold) and he failed due to dead swimmers(from the Dex and the 104 fever he had when we brought him in).
Talked to the Vet last night and we decided that this bull was most likely never gonna make it if that much antibiotic had not cured him,. So it looks like he is going to slaughter after he gets past the withdrawl dates. If all I want was to get as much money as possible out of him I could load him up with the banamine and dex and run him throught the sale barn but I don't believe in intentionally screwing someone else down line for a couple of bucks so I will no do that.
What I will do is put him back on the soaked feed and after he is clean to butcher I will sell him direct to the local abattoir and have them save the trachea and esophagus for me when they grind him for burger. If this plan works out I will post some pictures here of the necropsy on the affected parts.
When I know more I will post it here.
It starts a month ago when we PAP tested our bulls for the local all breeds bull sale. I have a real nice purebred red Gelbvieh bull that looked a little off and appeared to have a mild case of footrot starting. After doing the PAP test which involves running a probe into their heart to check the pressure in the pulmonary artery we treated him with LA 300 and some sulfa boluses, maybe a little overkill but we had one of the top vets in the country on hand and he agreed that we needed to knock this out before the sale which was 2 weeks away.
He seemed to be pretty OK afterwards except that he was extending his neck some and kinda choke'y, but he had , had 5 sulfa boluses shot down his throat so we didn't think much of it. After we tested the bulls(29 of them), we hauled them back to the pasture and turned them out and fed them. He appeared to be normal at that time(2pm on Monday) As luck would have it Tuesday is my busiest day and I never go look at the bulls on Tuesday so I rely on the folks I run my cows with to do that. Well that Tuesday turned out to be brutal for them with close to 20 calves being born and some sick ones to doctor and they did not get up to feed the bulls till almost 7pm. When they got there my friend calls me and says we have a dire emergency with your 11 bull I can hear him breathing from 30 yards away.
Of course I drove out there asap. He was in severe distress and had foam coming out of his mouth. When I arrived she was on the phone with the vet who had done the testing and his thought was either a reaction to the sulfa or possibly he had ched up and swallowed a rattlesnake and it had somehow scratched his gullet on the way down. He looked terrible and his neck starting behind the jaw was swollen so bad that we could not find the jugular vein to administer the Banamine IV as the Vet had suggested. We treated him that night with Pennicillan, Dex and Banamine.
Well things are going downhill again. He appeared to improve for a couple of days and then went downhill again. At that point we hauled him to the corral and gave him Draxin, Dex and more Banamine. That seemed to bring him around pretty good and on the advice of the vet I put him on a diet of soaked beet pulp, sweet mix and hay pellets. Soaked into almost a soup to not irritate his esophagus any worse. After 10 days of this I did a BSE on him (because I had him sold) and he failed due to dead swimmers(from the Dex and the 104 fever he had when we brought him in).
Talked to the Vet last night and we decided that this bull was most likely never gonna make it if that much antibiotic had not cured him,. So it looks like he is going to slaughter after he gets past the withdrawl dates. If all I want was to get as much money as possible out of him I could load him up with the banamine and dex and run him throught the sale barn but I don't believe in intentionally screwing someone else down line for a couple of bucks so I will no do that.
What I will do is put him back on the soaked feed and after he is clean to butcher I will sell him direct to the local abattoir and have them save the trachea and esophagus for me when they grind him for burger. If this plan works out I will post some pictures here of the necropsy on the affected parts.
When I know more I will post it here.
